"Always let your Conscience be your Guide"

Pinocchio (1940)

After winning his honorary Oscar for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Walt Disney took the opportunity to tell the audience about his next animated movie, which held the entire academy captivated for 25 minutes. And three years later, Pinocchio went one to actually win Disney two academy awards in competitive categories. The first animated movie to ever do so.
Pinocchio, for me as a child, was a mixed bag. I loved the imagery it held. Magical wishing stars that turned into beautiful fairies, wood shops filled with intricate clocks and toys, and songs I could sing along to.
Watching the movie today, after so many years, brought some of those emotions back to me. And there was a lot of stuff that as an adult I loved. Particularly the relationship Gepetto had with his pets. Disney pretty much perfectly encapsulated the simple yet complicated relationships pets have with their owners. I loved how Gepetto does what all cat owners do, which is constantly troll their feline friends with a hint of endearing love behind it. As a matter of fact, Walt's favorite character in the whole movie was Figaro, the original grumpy cat, insisting, halfway through production, that his role in the movie be somewhat bigger, and even going on to create a series of cartoons starring the furball.
Having said all this, one thing remains about this movie....... it's terrifying! Walt was not out to sugar coat anything when it came to showing Pinocchio the harsh realities of bad life choices. Scary Gypsies, evil men who turned bad behaving boys into donkeys, and giant ship-eating whales showed me as a plucky wide-eyed youth what happened when you did the wrong thing.
Not going to school = bad.
Smoking cigars and drinking alcohol = bad
Letting your father get swallowed by a whale = VERY BAD.
At first glance, these lessons seem simple and do nothing but continue to push the stereotype that children's movies paint a very black and white image of the world. That on your way to school, you'll meet two types of folk; blue-winged angels sent from heaven, or the spawn of Satan himself.
But looking deeply into this movie, beyond the magical thinking that wishing upon a star will make everything right happen, there is some themes and messages with their feet firmly planted in the ground.
First off, the message of 'always let your conscience be your guide' seems to be the REAL lesson to walk away with. The Blue Fairy didn't just appear and make it easy for Geppetto and Pinocchio. All she did was open the proverbial door. She left it up to Pinocchio, if you work hard, and do the right thing 'MAYBE someday you will be a real boy.'
RIGHT THERE, one of the toughest lessons we, as adults, must face in our everyday realities.
Things don't always work out, and there's a lot of temptations we face every single day, weather it's the shortcut to 'easy street' where all we wanna do is throw our school books out the window and join a traveling gypsy wagon, or instead of facing our problems, we'll just go to Pleasure Island and get wasted with our friends until we all sound like jack-asses. However, if we work hard, and listen to that small voice of our conscience, desperately trying to be heard and keep up with us as we stumble through life..... MAYBE things will work out, and when they do, we'll dance the night away to the music of cuckoo clocks.
Pretty powerful stuff for a seventy four year old animated Disney movie... and a pretty timeless message too. Especially when it's paired with such a killer soundtrack. As a matter of fact, the score and the original song "When You Wish Upon A Star" were what won the Oscars for this movie. Which, watching it now, makes perfect sense. It complimented the story perfectly. Being dreamy and magical when it needed to be, as well as dramatic and scary when appropriate.
Overall, this movie packs a punch. Strong imagery, beautiful orchestrations, and a message to write home about, it's well worth taking another look at again. Perhaps it's only flaw is some of the rampant racist imagery that it's age can probably only be the real excuse for. And again, I probably speak for most children when I say this movie is pretty darn scary. Nonetheless, consider this my official recommendation.